XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.guns, alt.atheism   
   From: webermark@polaris.net   
      
   Nobody went to the No Kings protests.  It's only you who keeps bringing   
   them up.   
      
   If Trump's so unpopular with Americans, why does every single white   
   Christian male in the deep south want to suck his penis?   
      
   It's very small but it's still a penis.   
      
   Charlie Kirk got Trump to suck him!   
      
   The ‘Shared Psychosis’ of Donald Trump and His Loyalists   
      
   Forensic psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee explains the outgoing president’s   
   pathological appeal and how to wean people from it   
      
   The violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building last week, incited by   
   President Donald Trump, serves as the grimmest moment in one of the darkest   
   chapters in the nation’s history. Yet the rioters’ actions—and Trump’s own   
   role in, and response to, them—come as little surprise to many,   
   particularly those who have been studying the president’s mental fitness   
   and the psychology of his most ardent followers since he took office.   
      
   One such person is Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist and president of   
   the World Mental Health Coalition.* Lee led a group of psychiatrists,   
   psychologists and other specialists who questioned Trump’s mental fitness   
   for office in a book that she edited called The Dangerous Case of Donald   
   Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. In   
   doing so, Lee and her colleagues strongly rejectedthe American Psychiatric   
   Association’s modification of a 1970s-era guideline, known as the Goldwater   
   rule, that discouraged psychiatrists from giving a professional opinion   
   about public figures who they have not examined in person. “Whenever the   
   Goldwater rule is mentioned, we should refer back to the Declaration of   
   Geneva, which mandates that physicians speak up against destructive   
   governments,” Lee says. “This declaration was created in response to the   
   experience of Nazism.”   
      
   Lee recently wrote Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul, a   
   psychological assessment of the president against the backdrop of his   
   supporters and the country as a whole. These insights are now taking on   
   renewed importance as a growing number of current and former leaders call   
   for Trump to be impeached. On January 9 Lee and her colleagues at the World   
   Mental Health Coalition put out a statement calling for Trump’s immediate   
   removal from office.   
      
   Scientific American asked Lee to comment on the psychology behind Trump’s   
   destructive behavior, what drives some of his followers—and how to free   
   people from his grip when this damaging presidency ends.   
      
   [An edited transcript of the interview follows.]   
      
   What attracts people to Trump? What is their animus or driving force?   
      
   The reasons are multiple and varied, but in my recent public-service book,   
   Profile of a Nation, I have outlined two major emotional drives:   
   narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers   
   to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship   
   magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for   
   an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the   
   followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn   
   for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of   
   power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock   
   and key” relationship.   
      
      
   “Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for   
   millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”   
   —refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary   
   group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an   
   influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the   
   population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and   
   inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously   
   healthy individuals. The treatment is removal of exposure.   
      
   Why does Trump himself seem to gravitate toward violence and destruction?   
      
   Destructiveness is a core characteristic of mental pathology, whether   
   directed toward the self or others. First, I wish to clarify that those   
   with mental illness are, as a group, no more dangerous than those without   
   mental illness. When mental pathology is accompanied by criminal-   
   mindedness, however, the combination can make individuals far more   
   dangerous than either alone.   
      
   In my textbook on violence, I emphasize the symbolic nature of violence and   
   how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have love, one   
   resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear.   
   Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a   
   nation in his election defeat. Violence helps compensate for feelings of   
   powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)